The Asylum Procedures Regulation (APR) which will be applicable from July 2026 significantly reforms the procedural architecture of EU asylum law. Among its more controversial features is the mainstreaming of “safe country” concepts (i.e. safe country of origin (SCO), safe third country (STC) and first country of asylum) as instruments for harmonising and accelerating asylum processing across EU member states (MS). Although the expanded use of these concepts is already envisaged under the Pact on Asylum and Migration, in April and May 2025, following pressure from a number of MS, the European Commission (EC) published two proposals for amending the APR:

1. Proposal for a Regulation amending Regulation (EU) 2024/1348 as regards the establishment of a list of safe countries of origin at Union level
2. Proposal for a Regulation amending Regulation (EU) 2024/1348 as regards the application of the ‘safe third country’ concept.

The European Parliament’s (EP) rapporteurs on the files (Alessandro Ciriani MEP (European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR), Italy) and Lena Düpont MEP (Group of the European People’s Party (EPP), Germany) prepared their draft reports in September and October respectively, and presented them in the EP Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE).

ECRE has already identified a number of major issues in the EC’s proposals, including the presumption that all EU candidate countries and several additional third countries are considered “safe” despite well-documented human rights risks for several groups of their nationals, and the weakening of both the connection criterion and of appeal rights. ECRE is concerned about their potential contribution to the broader trend of externalisation and the risk that they pose to the possibilities for people in need of protection to access fair asylum processes in the EU.

More specifically, based on the EC’s 2025 proposal, the EU list would automatically include all candidate countries for EU accession (albeit with certain exceptions for Türkiye and Ukraine) and the following third countries: Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco, and Tunisia). The EC’s proposal regarding the use of the STC concept entails a significant broadening of its scope: the mandatory “connection” between applicant and third country may be removed (allowing MS to rely instead on an agreement or arrangement with that country) and the automatic suspensive effect for appeals of inadmissibility decisions may be removed (meaning deportation could proceed while appeals are pending).

The two draft reports largely preserve the problematic elements of the EC’s proposals. In some areas, they go even further, mirroring several suggestions made by MS during the Council of the EU’s negotiations to reach a general approach. These include changes to the recitals that could be interpreted as encouraging MS to further expand their national lists of safe countries, as well as adjustments to the exclusion criteria for SCOs that would allow them to treat applications from nationals of Türkiye and Ukraine under accelerated procedures. In her draft report, Lena Düpont MEP proposes extending the STC concept even to unaccompanied minors considered to pose a security risk.

The adoption of the two draft reports in their current forms would make the EP’s position on the amendments to the APR extremely close to that of the Council and thus leave very little room for meaningful negotiations in the subsequent trilogue. It therefore has the potential to mark a significant shift in the EU’s asylum framework, with serious implications for fundamental rights, procedural safeguards and access to protection.

As things stand, it seems unlikely that the LIBE Committee members from the progressive political groups will support the adoption of the two draft reports. A majority in favour would therefore depend on a conservative coalition composed of members from the ECR, the EPP and the far-right Patriots for Europe. This would represent yet another instance in which the cordon sanitaire that has existed in the EP for decades is effectively breached – an occurrence that has already taken place several times during the current legislature.

Votes on the two draft reports in the LIBE Committee are scheduled for 3 December.

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